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Sekés
I'm What?Ein Gott! Setting and Info Sekés is meant to be as naturalistic as possible a conlang. It has a bundle of somewhat unusual features (multi-areal affricates, palatal and postalveolar contrasting features, six/seven places of articulation, 9-vowel system) combined with rather commonplace ones (affricates, gemination, split-ergative system and others). It's designed towards realism, fluidity, plausibility and general believability. I plan to make Sekés a language that looks like it could've been plucked off the continents down here. Note to all greedy idiots from the Germanosphere to which I am related: Hans, no way you stealing this. Phonology K'ekköksúkü körffasz Consonants 1These do not occur outside of sound changes and are not found in native words. All double consonants (except double " l ") are pronounced as geminate. As an aesthetically more appealing way to write certain geminates, the first consonant of each di/trigraph is doubled (jjy, tts, ppf, qqh) Vowels All vowels are monophthongs Letter Names Phonotactics and Morphophonology Phonotactics The syllable structure of Sekés is a maximal: "C" represents any non-trill, non-nasal, non-lateral fricative or non-approximant consonant and "N" represents vowels, trills, nasals, lateral fricatives and approximant. Syllables sometimes tend to be "CCV", "CV", "VC" or even just plain "V" and words generally tend to end in a consonant. Morphophonology, Morphological Sound Changes Sekés employs multiple regularised, morphological sound changes. Glottal Reinforcement Glottal reinforcement is a regular sound change in all words. In vowel-initial words, the vowels are reinforced with an unwritten glottal stop. This process is simmilar to word-initial glottal stops in German. Regressive Palatalisation Regressive palatalisation is a regular sound change in which certain consonants move more towards a back place of articulation. It is triggered by " i " and " ü ". The following consonants are palatalised: Regressive Sibilarisation Regressive sibilarisation is a regular sound change in which certain consonants sibilise into other consonants when they are followed by "e" or "ö". The following consonants are sibilised: 'Crasis' Crasis is (mostly) regular sound change affecting only vowels in which " i " and "u" that came together due to any circumstance phonetically convert to "ü" but are written as so. There are exceptions to crasis but the exceptions have been mostly regularised, too. Crasis happens both inside a word and at word boundaries and doesn't discriminate between vowel order or any other boundary except that the vowels must have nothing in between them. A non-crasified vowel combination uses diastresis over " i " (" ï ") and can sometimes be seen in affixes. The so-called uncrasified " i " is phonetically equal to the classic " i " but phonologically behaves differently. The uncrasified version is written only when near "u" and written classically without it. 'Gluttural Regressive Voicing' G.Regressive voicing is a regular sound change in which prepalatal/gluttural plosives (k/g/q) turn into reversedly voiced ones (g/k/qg respectively) when preceding an opposite-voiced fricative or plosive. It is either represented orthographically or left out for etymological reasons. It is solely one-level, so a cluster such as "kgp" would turn into "ggp" but not "kkp". 'Affrication' Affricaton is a regular sound change that occurs only due to suffixing. In it, when a plosive and a fricative come together in that order, if they match an affricate combination, form that affricate. 'Approximant Consonance and Rhotic Dissonance' Approximant consonance and rhotic dissonance are actually two sound changes but are grouped as one. They function on different simmilar principles and use the place of articulation as a trigger. ='Approximant Consonance' = Approximant consonance, also known as the Switch, is a sound change in which approximants come nearer to the following sound's POA and sometimes adjust for voicing. It might be called a variation on consonant hamony, The table shows the transformations: | | | |} ='Rhotic Dissonance' = Rhotic dissonance is a far simpler sound change than its sister-change approximant, the Switch. When a rhotic comes in contact with any consonant from its place of articulation, it swaps with the other rhotic. The rhotic dissonance can be called the Switch, even more appropriately. 'Moving "Amh"' Moving "Amh" is a semi-regular sound change in which, in certain words multi-syllable that contain an "amh"/"a" in the last syllable, it might disappear during declension. The disappearance is extremely random, but where the disappearance occurs is relatively predictable. In most words with the moving "amh", the "amh" is preserved in the Genitive, Malefactive, Ablative and Transitive case singulars, Ergative, Transitive and Lative case duals and Absolutive, Privative and Dative plurals. The sound change got its name from the Sékes name of the letter "A", "Amh". Basic Grammar The grammar of Sekés is divided into three classes: the Verb, the Nominal and the Obliques. The Verb section encompasses verbs, adverbs and additional conjugational help, the Nominal section encompasses nouns, adjectives, numbers, pronouns, nominal articles and simmilar features, and the Obliques section encompasses conjunctions, exclamations and other words that don't fit in other categories. Nominals Don't mind this. x Nominals are a moderately-synthetic class of words. Features Here is a list of the features common to all nominals. Cases There are 22 cases. They are as listed: Numbers ' There are three numbers: singular, dual and plural. '''Definiteness ' There are three levels of definiteness, the indicated definite, the indicated general and the unindicated indefinite. '''Genders There are six genders: Proximity There are three varieties of proximity, the proximate, distal and null proximities. Nouns Nouns are an open word category which generally names ideas, objects, animates and all imaginable terms. They are declined according to case, number, gender and animacy. Like all nominals, definiteness and proximality of nouns is indicated by specialised verb forms. Animacy Being a feature unique to nouns and their pro-forms, animacy needs to be explained here :) There are six inherent animacies, ordered by descending animacy: Declining | | |- | | | |} |} Dictionary Category:Languages